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Jwénxa
Jwénxa ( ) was an isolate language from the Múαl Gulf area. Some of its descendants are still spoken in the western regions of the area; however, it has also made much contribution to Uiil, which was heavily influenced by the language throughout its history. Phonology Jwénxa had an inventory of 19 consonants (or 29 if palatalised and labialised consonants are analysed as distinct) and 6 short-long monophthong pairs. The language had only a small number of dipthongs, all of which involve a movement from an open central vowel to a close vowel: /aɪ̯/ (ai), /ay̯/ (ay), /aɨ̯/ (au) and /aʊ̯/ (aü). Consonants Notes: 1 /n/ was originally two separate phonemes: /n̪/ and /ɳ/; likewise, /t/ was /t̪/ and /ʈ/, but the dental stop and the dental nasal alveolarised to t and n respectively, followed by the retroflex stop and nasal doing likewise. 2 tʃ was an allophone of /c/ in most dialects, but was the only realisation of it in some eastern dialects. Vowels Labialised and Palatalised Consonants In addition to the basic phonemic consonants, all nasals may be labialised and all plosives may be either labialised or palatalised. This feature influenced the emergence of a similar feature in Uiil. Phonotactics and Suprasegmental Features The maximal syllable structure is CVC, with many limitations on the final C. Vowel harmony forces all vowels in a word to have the same rounding; this only affects the close vowels. Stress :See Jwénxa:Stress for a more detailed analysis. Jwénxa is a syllable-timed language with tonal stress. All syllables leading up to the stressed syllable of the word have low tone and all following it — including the stressed syllable itself — have high tone. There are two different regular stress patterns; one for verbs, and one for all other (non-clitic) parts of speech. Verbs Stress falls on the penultimate syllable if it is "heavy" or, if it is not, it falls on the antepenultimate syllable. However, stress may also be phonemic, in which case it does not fall in either of these predictable places. Additionally, some very common verbs have lost their stress, without having become true clitics. Others Stress falls on the ultimate syllable (of the root) if it is "heavy" or, if it is not, it falls on the penultimate syllable. However, stress may also be phonemic, in which case it does not fall in either of these predictable places. In a monosyllabic word, stress generally falls on the word's one syllable; however, some monosyllabic words are completely unstressed or are clitics and thus considered a part of the word they attach to for the purposes of stress calculation. Stressed syllables are unmarked in Jwénxa's orthography, but in this documentation will be marked with an acute accent (´) on the vowel; for text clarity purposes, stressed long vowels are written with an acute accent below — ā̗ ē̗ ī̗ ū̗ ǖ̗ — and stressed ȳ is written as ŷ. Orthography Jwénxa is written with an ; that is, consonants are written explicitly and vowels are either unmarked or marked secondarily. Herein, the vowels are represented as shown in the vowel table above. | | | |} Grammar :See Jwénxa:Grammar.